


life is a habit that's hard to break

by quixxotique (crownlessliestheking)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: 5+1 Things, Bad Puns, Blood Magic-Related Self Harm, Dark Comedy, Death as a concept and an event and a person, Discworld Elements, Fairy Tale Elements, Fantasy setting, Gallows Humor, Happy Ending (Technically), Irreverence, Locked Tomb Trilogy Elements, M/M, Magic, Metaphysics, Mild/Mentioned Gore, Near Death Experiences, Necromancer!Dirk, Necromancy, One Instance of Technical Self-Harm, Skeletons, Temporary Character Death, death!john, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:21:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26488591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crownlessliestheking/pseuds/quixxotique
Summary: MORTAL SOUL, COMEST THOU PEACEFULLY INTO MY REA-“Oh,” Death says, voice breaking out of the soul-shaking timbre for a split-second, the baleful blue light in the hollows of the skull flickering for a moment before it returns. YOU’RE A NECROMANCER. WELL. NEVER MIND, THEN. YOU GUYS ALWAYS HAVE ME ROLLING OUT THE USUAL WELCOME MAT WHENEVER I SEE YOU FOR THE FIRST TIME. AND NINE TIMES OUT OF TENYOU AREN’T EVEN PROPERLY DEAD.I MAY AS WELL DROP THIS. IT HURTS MY THROAT.A skeleton clearing its throat, despite the complete lack of throat, is not the strangest thing that’s happened to Dirk today. It is, however, the least painful, so at least there's that.
Relationships: John Egbert/Dirk Strider
Comments: 12
Kudos: 63





	life is a habit that's hard to break

**Author's Note:**

> Once more I slap two different sources together and present to you the swirled Play-Doh result. Guess who keeps getting carried away with the world-building aspects and dashes of plot. (Answer: it's me.)
> 
> Death!John is heavily inspired by Discworld's version of Death, which fits his character pretty well, I think. The only thing you need to know is that he's a skeleton, and that one of the books showed him having a midlife crisis and working as a (really effective and talented) frycook instead of collecting souls. Title based on a quote from Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man. 
> 
> The necromantic system I'm using is in turn inspired by Gideon the Ninth, but, you know. Without the space opera element. You don't need to know the book(s) to get what I mean, but the short of it is that thanergy = death energy, thalergy = life energy, and the Houses are basically necromancy specialities detailed here: https://www.tor.com/2019/09/20/find-your-necromancy-family-among-the-houses-of-gideon-the-ninth/  
> If you don't want to follow the link and check out the cool-ass insignia skulls, I've extracted the relevant stuff. So the important Houses mentioned here are:  
> \- Third House: Cannibalization of thanergy from corpses, no matter how old. They surpass other houses’ limits for drawing power from dead bodies  
> \- Sixth House: Psychometry, by which they can read the history that echoes of life and death leave on objects  
> \- Seventh House: The preservation of the corpse and the stasis of soul, prolonging the space between life and death and between death and decay  
> \- Ninth House: The raising and crafting of skeletons. Though a staple of all necromancy, none master the art of skeletons like a Ninth necromancer. 
> 
> While I liked the lil world-building, the writing on this one is...hm. Not up to par, but this is fun and procrastination on the fics I'm actually meant to be writing. Go figure.

**1.**

MORTAL SOUL, COMEST THOU PEACEFULLY INTO MY REA-

“Oh,” Death says, voice breaking out of the soul-shaking timbre for a split-second, the baleful blue light in the hollows of the skull flickering for a moment before it returns. YOU’RE A NECROMANCER. WELL. NEVER MIND, THEN. YOU GUYS ALWAYS HAVE ME ROLLING OUT THE USUAL WELCOME MAT WHENEVER I SEE YOU FOR THE FIRST TIME. AND NINE TIMES OUT OF TEN YOU AREN’T EVEN PROPERLY DEAD.

I MAY AS WELL DROP THIS. IT HURTS MY THROAT.

A skeleton clearing its throat, despite the complete lack of throat, is not the strangest thing that’s happened to Dirk today. It is, however, the least painful, so at least there’s that.

“There we go. Much better. Although,” Death adds, with what seems like an appraising glance. “I think I’ve been more thoroughly fooled this time. That’s a whole lot of blood. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone with the ‘peacefully’ opener after all, if you die fighting, you usually want to keep flailing about on instinct, and that’s just kind of annoying when I need to get my work done, y’know?”

Dirk doesn’t answer, on account of how he can’t move or talk or do anything.

It would be absolutely fucking terrifying if he didn’t know what was going on already. Since he does, he’s only about to piss himself, rather than shit himself out of panic. Thank fuck he’s not in his body to do that and humiliate himself in front of literal Death, who is looking at him like-

Okay. Dirk can’t actually tell, since Death doesn’t have a face, and therefore no real facial expressions.

He tries to talk, and just ends up with a deeply embarrassing “Hrrg.”

Every single book that described this as some kind of a religious experience was wrong.

“I know.” Is that sympathy? Is the Cold Lord supposed to even feel that? It sure sounds like it, and this makes Dirk deeply suspicious. “Don’t try to talk just yet, I don’t think you’ll be able to. Not that you’re in bad shape down there or anything, but the fact that you’re here and so, uh, generally solid about it means you’re at least _very_ unconscious. Probably from a head wound or something. Is your heart still beating?”

That’s an excellent question. Dirk can’t do any of his usual ‘okay, take a deep breath Strider and fucking focus’ routine, so he just tries to focus hard. It helps, that there’s nothing here but him and Death and the grey sameness around them. He casts his awareness not out, but back, feeling for the tether whose presence means that he’s still alive.

Dirk’d slump in relief if he could, when he finally feels it, like a chain anchored to the center of his chest (metaphysically and metaphorically, he can’t actually tell if it’s visible right now; the only thing he can see is Death standing above him).

“Hrrn.” Not an improvement on the verbosity, but the relief must have shone through.

“Good,” Death says. “Or- maybe not good? It’s not actually your time yet, despite all this. I checked. The aspects of us at our final meeting are much older.”

“Nnnrg.” It’s difficult to imagine a literal skeleton looking older.

“Well, _I_ don’t look older. And I look good for my age, just so you know.”

“Hhhff.” If he says so. Dirk’s not about to tell Death that he’s ugly. They’re nice bones, all things considered; well-cared for, smooth and free of scratches other than one nasty crack running along where the left eye socket is.

“No, I’m not going to tell you how old I am. What are you, a novice initiate or something? I haven’t even seen you in passing.”

Another garbled noise. Dirk can’t even manage to offer context, which is real fuckin’ humiliating when it comes down to it. Is this what babies feel like? If so, no fucking wonder no one remembers their infancy; the brain must block it out for good reason.

“I’m going to take that as a….no? You don’t have any paint on, is why I thought, but those dumb glasses sure are on. I guess you look a bit too old to be a novice.”

A bit too old. Dirk’s in his mid-twenties, but he guesses that must be pretty much a baby or something for a being representing an infinite, inevitable, and eternal concept. Not that he thinks such a being has any time counting years to begin with, not when they talk like, well, a human being oddly updated on modern speech patterns, but still.

“Your face is doing something,” Death informs him, almost cheerfully.

Well, fucking _good._ Dirk normally does not like his face doing anything other than sitting in neutral to unnerve people, but he can make an exception right now.

“I don’t know _what_ it’s trying to do, but that’s definitely something. You should probably chill out. Relax. Do some…yoga? I hear that’s good for flexibility.”

Dirk might have to go resurrect the morons who wrote all those books and kill them again himself, to be honest. This has to be a fever dream. There’s no way Death is like- this. Right?

“Not that I do a lot of it myself, since I don’t need it, but your shoulders look tense. And that’s saying a lot, since you don’t even have your body right now.”

No, he knows he didn’t nearly die or pass out from a fever, unfortunately. This is probably real. Or as real as it gets when the neurons of his brain are firing blindly and lining up with his belief system. He can’t even pretend to buy that excuse; he knows intimately that this is real, just like he knows himself, just like he knows gravity and air and water. It’s truth, immutable. Death is here, and Death is, apparently, completely uninterested in living up to any mortal ideals beyond appearance.

“You’re still alive, though. In case you were wondering. Must’ve been a nasty fall or something,” Death says, almost earnest now. “I bet something conked you on the head and you weren’t expecting it, else you’d be able to talk, at least. Moving’s trickier, but talking? Most people can do that, if they’re necromancers, unless a rock falls on them. Or I guess a really dense femur. It happens.”

If Dirk just got hit on the head by a randomly falling, ‘really dense femur’, he’s going to eat that femur.

“Not that I don’t always see new faces, but the new faces aren’t always alive,” Death continues. “The only necromancers that really show up like this are from m- the Ninth, I think it’s called, or ones like you, who end up…kind of like this. Oh- I guess folks from the Eighth, too, but they’re freaky so I don’t usually answer, and they’re looking for someone specific who’s not me, anyway.”

The Ninth. Death _thinks_ it’s called, as if the Houses weren’t set up by the Emperor in his name, as if Death can’t be bothered to learn the details of its acolytes. Dirk would be fucking furious if it wasn’t a hilariously ironic twist- why _should_ Death bother, after all?

He’s not a Vestal to cry about it; Dirk’s particular brand of power doesn’t have much to do with the metaphysical. At least, it hasn’t so far, and that’s been deliberate on his part. Maybe this is something he should look into for the future.

He says none of this, though. He still can’t talk.

Death sighs.

“Yeah. You weren’t looking for me either, I can tell. But that’s alright, I know we’ll meet again.” All skulls grin, but this one is more purposeful than the last. WE ALWAYS DO.

Yeah, Dirk bets they will.

His vision wavers, the skeletal form above him blurring into light against grey, and there’s a dull ache manifesting itself in his head, radiating from his left temple outwards. It’s distractingly _physical_ , when he has no physical form right now- because he has no physical form right now.

“Oh, that’s your cue, I bet. I’ll see you later, then,” Death says. “No, wait.” A pause, another very strange throat-clearing.

The pale flames burn themselves into the backs of his eyelids, flickers of mad light in the abyss. Good to see that there’s some weight to the mythos, even if the majority of it is bullshit.

UNTIL NEXT TIME, MORTAL. MAY IT BE OUR LAST. BUT I DON’T THINK I AM THAT FORTUNATE.

**2.**

MORTAL SOUL, THOU NEEDST NOT-

“Goddamn, really? You again? It hasn’t even been a full year yet, how many of these situations are you going to get yourself into?”

Dirk makes a vague noise in the back of his throat. Hey, that’s much better than last time, although he’s not so sure this is a good thing.

(He’s certainly a lot less _conscious_ than last time, and he has to actively focus on the fact that his body is a real, semi-living thing, even if he’s not currently occupying it. But he’s well-practiced at splitting his attention, though it’s usually involved in sensing out bone fragments and seeds either he or others have left behind, that can be used.)

“’Swaa,” he tries. Slurs. Christ, that’s not coherent. Dirk clears his throat.

“Gesundheit.”

“’S. A. War,” he tries again. Enunciating each word this time is easier now that he’s forcing his tongue into cooperativity, although it feels too heavy in his mouth. Reminding himself that this isn’t even his real tongue, and nor is it his real mouth, and so he shouldn’t be having any problems talking at all, doesn’t help, weirdly enough.

“There’s always a war,” Death says, pragmatically. “I don’t usually see your kind so often either way. It’s good that you’re talking, by the way, it was pretty quiet last time. And I’m not usually the kind of guy who really loves his monologues.”

Dirk thinks that seems out of character, but given that he’s still trying to corral himself into coherency, doesn’t bother pointing that out.

“War’s between necroman-,” he breaks, off, sighs. “Nec-ro-man-cers.”

“Oh. Again?” Death seems oddly interested in that, although it’s hard to tell just going off of tone and not facial expressions. Dirk knows that he himself does an excellent deadpan, but this is unfair.

“Last one was ages ago,” Dirk says. It’s getting easier, though he still can’t move his mouth too much, and his sibilants are still slurred. He’ll take it, though.

“To you,” Death says. “Not to me. The souls that died there still clamor for life and vengeance. Not always in that order.”

“It’s a good thing you don’t have ears,” Dirk tells him, straight-faced.

“What? How do you know that?”

Dirk blinks.

“You’re…a skeleton.”

“Only metaphysically.”

“So…you have metaphysical ears?”

“…Will you stop with that logic? You’re talking now and you don’t have real vocal cords.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“Well, maybe I don’t want to answer your question, how about that?”

“I’ll keep bothering you if you don’t? I’ve got time to kill.”

“You can’t kill time,” Death tells him solemnly. “I would know, I’ve tried.”

Dirk is about 90% sure that he’s being fucked with.

“Try harder,” he offers. “I know you can do it, champ. I believe in you.”

There’s something to be said for the expressivity of skulls, that Dirk can detect the unimpressed look he’s getting right about now. He just offers one of his own back.

“You know, I’m really not looking forward to the day you die properly, and I have to deal with you for longer. I’ve met you twice and I already think you’re going to annoy the hell out of me in the afterlife.”

“You’ve got a remarkable grasp of my character already,” Dirk says, biting back a smile. That wouldn’t do at all. “But since some people still deserve to go to hell, and if that’s inside you, who am I to rob them of that experience?”

“Inside- wait. Was that a sex thing?” Death sounds incredibly put out by that. Ha, put out. Dirk cracks himself up sometimes.

“I don’t know. Do you have insides? And don’t say metaphysically, yes. That was a real question.” Dirk points an accusing finger at the skeleton, who manages to look somewhat studiously innocent. Dirk is, of course, not buying it for a second.

“I do have insides, then. I mean, inside my ribs. Probably inside my skull,” Death finally offers. “You’re demanding for someone who’s only really here by my grace. If I wanted to kill you I could do it in an instant, pluck your soul out from this liminal plane and deposit it wherever I chose.”

“None of the Houses can do that.”

The skull grins wider. “No. But I am Death. Did you think I was going to tell my acolytes how to do everything?”

“I guess you’ve gotta keep your air of mystique somehow, bro,” Dirk says, but it comes a fraction of a second too late. They both know he’s lost this particular salvo. Still, it serves as a reminder of just who Dirk has been mouthing off to. He tries to take comfort in the fact at least he’s talking properly now.

Still, he’s relieved to feel that familiar tug just under his ribcage, the itch of flesh knitting back together and the hollow burn of bone regrowing. It makes him squirm in his spot, a flicker of discomfort crossing his face before he can tamp it down.

“You’re going, then?”

“Looks like it. Probably isn’t gonna be the last time you see me, though. You might want to prepare yourself for that, man. You thought I was annoying before, wait until you see me actively try to be.” Dirk says that with a twist of humor, and a twist of bitterness, because fuck, if anyone was going to be _too much_ for Death itself, it really would be him, wouldn’t it?

“I’ll bring a book and a good chair, next time,” Death says with a sigh that’s like the rattling of wind chimes in a graveyard, the settling of dust onto old bones. Not Death’s old bones- those are, technically ageless, and if they’re dusty under those robes, Dirk can’t tell, though he very much doubts it. “You’re kind of a pain, you know that? Dying and then not staying dead, but you’re a necromancer so I have to come look like I’m collecting you anyway. What if I wanted to play a game of- bridge, or something?”

“Consequences of having a friend who is _very_ good with thalergy, and with being very good with thanergy and souls myself,” Dirk shrugs. Or he tries to- he can talk here now just fine, but moving is still tricky, when his soul wants to remember the pain shaping his body so far away. “It’s not all that bad. And there’s some peace and quiet here, which is nice. It’s real fuckin’ loud down there, bro, let me tell you that.”

“It’s getting real fuckin’ loud up here, bro, I’ll tell you that.” Death huffs, almost petulant. If you could believe that an eldritch, ageless reaper of souls could be petulant like a kid being denied candy and told to go to bed early.

“Wow, you just said ‘fuck’ and ‘bro’ in the same sentence. Those priests down there must be going batshit crazy after their prophetic dreams. How much do you want to bet that the order of all things will have crumbled by the time I get down there?”

“You know, I kind of liked you better ten minutes ago when you could only do monosyllabic answers. You’re kind of a fast learner.”

“It’s one of my many talents,” Dirk says, deciding to take this one as a compliment. “But, seriously. You’re more- chill, than I expected you to be.”

More human, he doesn’t say.

“I just told you how annoying you are, and you think that’s chill?” If eyebrows were present, they’d be raised about now.

“You also said you would bring a book and a chair next time, and you’re speaking like a normal human being, and you’re, you know. Not a dread force whose will is inevitable and whose voice rings with the echoes of Fate itself. Although I’ll admit that the part about you being difficult to look directly at is true; it makes me feel like I’m doing a fifty page logic proof.” He adds that to keep the mood light- something that he’s not been actively aware of _wanting_ to do until now. Huh. Dirk’s always been told that he needs to take Death itself more seriously rather than just technique, but this is definitely not what the Vestals had in mind.

“Why would you want to do so much math?” Death asks, apparently latching on to the one thing that Dirk thinks is entirely normal. “I mean- sure, I know what they say about me, but I don’t think I want to be compared to _math._ ”

“Math is fun,” Dirk says, with the feeling that this conversation is spiralling out of control.

“No! It’s not! It exists only to like, torture poor souls. If Hell existed I bet they’d be doing lots of math in there. Especially geometry,” Death says. There’s a distinct note of disgust in the voice, now.

“Since when do you do geometry?” Dirk asks, genuinely baffled now. “Like. Is there a Grim Reaper school or some shit, except you went and killed all your classmates, or they flunked out, and geometry was part of that?”

“What? No, that’s stupid. It’s just me.”

“Huh. Sounds kind of lonely, if you ask me. Are you sure you didn’t have any kind of- on the job training for this? Not even an internship?”

“Good thing I didn’t ask you, right?”

Nothing follows, and Dirk figures he’s probably pushed way too much as is, but. It does sound lonely. He doesn’t know what he’d do, if he was relegated to a separate plane of existence, only to appear to those dead and dying- and necromancers, under certain specific and fleeting circumstances.

Or less fleeting, in this case. Jane’s taking a while this time, but his tether is still very much sound.

“Okay then,” he finally says. “We don’t need to talk about that, I guess. You’re good at your job, anyway.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Well, the dead haven’t broken loose of wherever they go, and there’s no hideous sump of madness created by the collapse of their world into that of the living, so. You’re doing a good job.”

“The bar you just described, Dirk? Six feet under.”

“Keep your awful jokes to yourself.”

“They’re not awful! And- shouldn’t you be going, anyway? I think you’re all healed up.”

Remarkably prescient, there. Dirk glances down at himself just to see his tether get pulled taut, and again, the sense of physicality where there isn’t one, though there’s no accompanying pain other than the phantom one of a body that’s remembering injuries that were there only a few minutes ago, but aren’t now.

(He wonders if he could ever get to move his body while also being here- another thing to look into, it’d be useful in the future. What he knows of Eighth techniques don’t mention it at all, but that kind of power hasn’t been seen since the Lyctors. And Dirk is no Lyctor, but if one of them wrote out how they did it? He could follow instructions.)

“Probably, yeah,” he agrees, and his voice turns to static as his outline vanishes, leaving a lone figure behind watching the space where he used to be.

**3.**

“We have got to stop meeting like this, you know.”

“What- are you reading Complacency of the Learned?” Dirk can’t help but stare at the very thick tome resting delicately on black robes. It’s easier to comprehend than said black robes resting on and puddling underneath a hideously plastic lawn chair in cyan and lime green.

“Yes! I did tell you I was going to be bringing a book from now on. Someone got brained with it last month, so I thought- wow, any book that could kill someone is probably required reading for me, right?” Death pauses, looking almost contemplatively at the page now. “I think that just reading it could kill some people. It’s dense. Metaphorically, and in terms of content. And, you know. Physically.”

“My cousin wrote that,” Dirk says, after a moment. “Sixth House, Rose Lalonde.”

“Oh, you’re related to the Seer? Tell her I have some notes, please. I don’t think I’ve really met her yet.”

“You wouldn’t have; she finished her training but is focused more on research and writing than anything else. She won’t have had cause to appear like I did, and she doesn’t usually work with fresh corpses.”

“Just their things, right? Your Houses are all very funny, you know. Death is death is death. Is, well, me. I don’t really get why you feel the need to divide things up that way. I mean, I know not all your family’s in the Sixth. I see your brother pretty often, he’s nice. Very good at taxidermy.”

“He’s of the Rose Unblown.”

“Seventh, hm. It suits him, I think. He’s- well. Relaxed about it, even if he’s got a weird amount of dead bird pets, even for a necromancer.” If the skull had an intact nose, Dirk suspects it’d be wrinkled right about now. The impression of it is there, nonetheless, and it’s- kind of endearing.

“Is it better if I tell you that he did know them when they were alive?”

“Kind of? It’d definitely explain why he has such elaborate funerals for them, because, again. The intensity of that was weird, even for a necromancer. I don’t think anyone really needs four pallbearers for a shoebox coffin with a bird in it that’s just going to…kind of come back, anyway? But he respects the art a lot, I guess, so I don’t mind it too much. They’re always fun to watch.”

“Hm. Is that why his dead crows are pretty much the same as when they were alive?”

“What? No. I have no idea what you’re talking about! I’d never let anything like that slide, even if they’re just birds and no one’s looking and it’s more of a _loan_ than anything else.” All skulls grin, but this one seems pretty bashful all of a sudden.

“Anyway!” A bright note, a change in topic. “Which one are you? House, I mean.”

“Oh. Ninth, technically,” Dirk says, glancing down at himself. He hazards sitting upright, and his entire form fizzes at the edges, before he focuses on solidifying.

“Not Eighth?” Ah, there it is. Dirk shakes his head.

“Nah. My dad was, but he’s kind of an empty shell right about now. He…let some things in that he wasn’t meant to. I’ve got the same talent, sure, because he made sure to teach me, but after what happened to him? I’m sticking with the skeletons.” Dirk pauses, glances at Death. “And the Keepers are fuckin’ freaky. Skeletons are much more versatile, and I don’t mind the more…unpleasant sacrifices that sometimes need to be made. So, no. Not The Forgiving House. I’m not that forgiving, after all.”

“I can see that! I wasn’t either, but at this point, some souls don’t have anyone left to forgive them. And I’m just carrying them from one place to another, so what’s the harm, right?” Death’s head shakes, an oddly human gesture. “Anyway. There’s some Seventh work in here too, right?”

“My heart’s probably still beating, if that’s what you’re asking,” Dirk hazards. “I’ve just been experimenting with a few things lately. Stasis helps, when you need to be kept on that precipice. I can’t make much use of the thanergy from it in this state, but then again, I’ve always been shit at drawing energy from corpses anyway. Whole family is, in fact.”

“Definitely weird from someone sworn to the Locked Tomb,” Death pronounces, sounding very satisfied. “But not bad weird! Things used to be different, you know. Necromancers were necromancers were necromancers, none of all that House fuss.”

“And then the Emperor came along,” Dirk says, shrugging. “He changed everything. And we don’t get too bad a rep these days for being creepy and bone-obsessed.”

“Says someone from the House of the Sewn Tongue,” Death says, and- is that teasing? Dirk doesn’t know how to deal with it, so he ignores that. “You wear the paint _all_ the time. You guys are literally the cults, you know that? You’re creepy _and_ bone-obsessed.”

“I do like a good boning,” Dirk agrees, with the barest hint of a smirk.

“Quit that.”

“Quit what?”

“That. The bad bone jokes. I have had enough of them from smart-mouthed necromancers, you know,” Death says, distinctly huffy now. It’s very nearly cute, but Dirk catches himself before he can take that thought too far.

“Excuse me, you don’t have a monopoly on bad bone or death-related jokes. It’s called gallows humor, look it up,” Dirk says, snide as he can manage, just to get under Death’s skin further. Metaphorical skin. There’s no literal skin present.

He’s rewarded with a neat column of four middle phalanges stuck up at him. Dirk’s mind wanders, just for a second. If Death had hands they might be bigger than his own, and that’s a bit odd to think about. He wonders if the palms would be lined (if they’d have a life line at all), or if they’d look anything resembling human.

“What happened to you this time, anyway?” Death asks.

“Like you don’t already know.”

“Well. We have to talk about something, and if I get to choose the topic, it’s one less thing for you to be a dick about.”

“Pragmatic approach,” Dirk drawls out. “Fine. Blood loss. Don’t worry, the ol’ meatsack isn’t in any immediate danger, I’m pretty much just passed out. Used too much of it, overextended myself this time around.”

“This time around,” Death repeats. “Because you are an idiot. Yes?”

“No. I’m a genius,” Dirk corrects. Respect for Death or not, worship that’s been crammed down his throat or not, Dirk isn’t just going to let a bunch of bones in a trench coat call him stupid. “Officially, anyway. The Ninth’s best.”

“Maybe not it’s brightest, if your idea of technique is to bleed all over the place. What happened to sowing splinters and carrying spares if there’s nothing already in the ground?”

“I ran out?”

“What-, how do you just run out? Maybe I need to pay more attention to what you’re doing when you’re in the living world. To see how stupid you actually are,” Death adds, like there’s any ulterior motive that Dirk could suggest instead.

“Uh huh.” Well, just because he doesn’t have one, doesn’t mean he can’t sound real dubious about it. “Well, you have fun with that, but if you’re peeping on me in the shower, we’re going to have words. Some things are sacred to a guy, y’know, and that’s one of them.”

“I’m not going to watch you shower!”

If he didn’t know better, he’d say that sounded flustered. A shame there’s no blood vessels, so Dirk could know for sure with a blush, but he can live without that confirmation.

“Damn right you’re not. Water’s real hot, it’s like a sauna in there with all the steam.”

“You’re going to boil yourself alive like a lobster,” comes the answer, distinctly fascinated. “I haven’t seen that before. I mean- I have, the boiling alive, but no one’s ever managed to do it to themselves on purpose.”

“My showers aren’t going to kill me, chill,” Dirk says. “But if I die in there, I’ll die real happy.”

“There is something very wrong with your head, if you’re willing to die in a shower _and_ if you keep running out of bonemeal.”

“Listen. I had to make a lot of constructs in a hurry, okay? Get off my ass about it,” Dirk grumbles.

“So, what, an army of small ones, or one really big one?”

“A bunch of really big ones,” Dirk corrects, a little frostily. “Bro, I don’t come in here and tell you how to do your job-,”

“I’m sure you’ll get to that eventually.”

“-, so you don’t tell me how to do mine,” he finishes, ignoring the interruption entirely. “Also, it’s rude to interrupt people.”

“You’re the one who’s interrupting all my peace and quiet by half-dying all the time.” Huffy, again. Dirk tamps down on a flicker of amusement.

“You’re ancient, you should know better. I’m but a blink of an eye in comparison to the eons you’ve existed, O tenebrous lord.”

“Ugh. Tenebrous lord? Is that really what they’re going with these days?” Death sounds…almost disgusted by it. But Dirk figures that’s fair, all the good titles were probably already taken. They’re scraping the bottom of the barrel these days, instead of sticking with what works.

“Ninth’s always been full of fanatics that way. Take it up with the ones who came up with the prayers.”

“I _guess_. I don’t feel like anyone’s tenebrous lord,” Death says, glancing down at the very tenebrous robes that writhe at the scrutiny.

“You look the part, which is important,” Dirk offers. “If you weren’t a skeleton wearing all black and holding a giant scythe, I’m pretty sure it’d be different.”

“I used to have a warhammer, you know. It’s at home these days, I don’t really need to do that much smiting.”

“You should break it out again.” Dirk considers it for a moment. “You could just whack the soul out of someone’s body when it’s time, with that. It’d be pretty fucking badass.”

“I’m already pretty fucking badass, I think.” Bone gleams brighter, the fire casting shadows that flicker in the hollows of the skull. Dirk has to concede that point. It’s hard to go wrong with a skeleton when it comes to sheer ominous power.

“You do okay,” he says instead. He’s still busy trying to imagine Death looking like anything else, and coming up entirely short. “Did you ever knock anyone’s soul out of their body with the hammer?”

“No. But I could knock yours back in with it, when you get too chatty,” Death suggests. “That’d be fun.”

“You keep harping on about your peace and quiet, sure, but you did put your book down to talk to me,” Dirk points out. “I think you like me. So, next time, you should show me the hammer. I bet you can’t even lift it, you’ve got no muscle.” A pause. “Don’t say it.”

“I’m gonna say it,” Death says smugly. “Metaphysical muscle.”

“God fucking dammit,” Dirk sighs. “But- seriously. What’d it look like? Did you have, I don’t know, a whole set of armor to go with it?”

“Not exactly. It was more of a ceremonial outfit. It has been… a long time since I wore it. I’m sure it’s lying around somewhere, too.”

“I guess you’ve got a lot of ceremonial outfits.”

“Ha ha. I have regular clothes, too, you know. Or- comfortable ones, that I can wear when I’m not working.”

Dirk has to take a moment to grapple with the fact that death is Death’s….day job. Somehow, this is harder to conceptualize than anything else he’s said or done here before.

The sudden blur of his surroundings as he feels his body start to stir is almost welcoming as a distraction. Key word being almost- the main sensation right now is being fucking _dizzy_ , followed shortly by nausea. He’s going to vomit as soon as he’s corporeal.

“You’re looking a bit green, there,” Death says with the relish of someone who’s very amused by that fact.

“Hilarious. I hate vomiting,” Dirk answers, squeezing his eyes shut here.

(And there, his body responding.)

“Can I just stay here so I don’t embarrass myself by barfing all over poor Jane once she’s done patching me up? She’s going to fucking murder me for it anyway, so I might as well save myself the trouble of the trip.”

“Is Jane the one who’s been healing you the whole time?”

“I’m taking that as a no, then,” Dirk sighs. “But yeah, she is. She’s real good at all that thalergy stuff. Conceptually, I get how it works, but.”

“But you’re a Ninth necromancer, and you’re about the furthest anyone can get from a thalergic expert,” Death says, filling in the gaps. “Finally. Something Dirk Strider can’t do. Other than shut up, or die permanently, it seems. Or stop bothering me.”

“Hey. This is your job, you signed up for this one. All customer service jobs have to deal with customers, you knew what you were getting into.”

“I don’t think they ever accounted for anyone like you,” Death says, but it doesn’t feel like an insult this time. The nausea doubles, beating out the dizziness, and doubled sensation of dry heaving both here and there only makes it worse.

“I think,” Dirk wheezes out, curled right up into a ball, “I think. That I’m going to go soon. This sucks ass.”

“I can’t help but feel like you deserve it.”

“Fuck all the way off,” Dirk groans, and heaves again. Nothing comes up, which is probably for the best, because he can _not_ handle both physical and metaphysical vomiting right about now. He feels it this time, when the tether yanks insistently and his form wavers, an imminent threat of erasure, however impermanent. This really is the worst.

“Goodbye, then. Until next time.”

Dirk manages to groan out something vaguely coherent in response, he’s sure.

“Oh, and Dirk?” Death calls out, and Dirk looks up, automatic. For a second, the black robes are replaced with soft blue cloth, the empty sockets and infernal flames with bright cobalt eyes. The grin stays the same, though the teeth are a bit more noticeable, now. Dirk has a vague inclination of ‘oh, is he cute?’, but his vision blurs hard to tell him that he doesn’t have much longer here. “I think you can probably call me by my first name, at this point. It’s John.”

Dirk’s last thought before he’s sucked back out of the peace and quiet is that _John_ is such a fucking ironic name, and really, it should be Mort or something. He wakes up wheezing out laughter through mouthfuls of blood, the sound high-pitched and hysterical as Jane’s face wavers and swims in front of him.

 _John_. Fuck, but that’s funny.

**4.**

“Wow, you’re in worse shape than usual,” John says, cheerfully. The skeletal aspect flickers out of existence now, to be replaced by a form Dirk still finds pretty damn disconcerting. He’s not sure that Death is supposed to look like a cheerful guy in his mid-twenties, tall and smiling bright, with buck-teeth, for fuck’s sake. In fact, it goes against just about everything he’d gotten drilled into him as an initiate. The fact that he’s still in the fucking chair with a book in his lap makes it a lot worse.

Dirk decides he likes it, immediately. Not just because the form is unfortunately handsome, and he can appreciate that now that he’s seeing it properly, but because it suits him, oddly enough.

“Can still talk, technically,” Dirk answers, though he remains lying where he is, phantom (ha, get it? He cracks himself up sometimes) pain radiating threefold in his chest. “I’ve got to say, this one’s gonna give me a hell of a power up, but I’m not so sure it’ll be worth it for having that bitch’s fork stuck in me.”

“Your injuries don’t really transfer here,” John agrees, which is neither here nor there when it comes down to it. “Which bitch are you talking about? There’s kind of a lot of them.”

“The Empress,” he clarifies. “You wouldn’t have met her, she’s, well. The Undying, and we’re all technically sworn to her. She’d have sent a lot of people your way.”

John comes to sit cross-legged next to him, novel abandoned (though he’s much further through it now than last time), close enough to be within arm’s reach, although it leaves the hideous chair within full view. Dirk redirects his gaze upwards into the faint greying edges of their space instead.

MEENAH PEIXES. YES. I KNOW HER. WITCH OF LIFE, THIEF OF THALERGY. THE PRIDE OF THE SECOND ONCE, AS THE SECOND IS HERS. SHE HAS EVADED ME FOR A LONG, LONG TIME BUT SHE WILL COME TO ME IN THE END AS ALL DO.

A pause. Death speaks, and all Dirk can do is watch and listen, as flesh rots away to reveal writhing white maggots and worms, blackening and falling off in clumps, the dark hair growing as skin recedes until there is nothing left but gleaming-white bone, the spark of malice in the void behind its eyes, the dread grin of the Keeper of Souls.

IS THAT YOUR GOAL, LITTLE MORTAL? WHY YOU SPEND YOUR BLOOD AND BONE SO WILLINGLY? WHY I HAVE SEEN YOU SO OFTEN?

“You’re doing that thing again,” he says. He has to force the words out. “Nice metacarpals. You’re double-jointed?”

Death is silent for a moment, as muscle and sinew crawl back to cover beautiful stark bone, fat and vessels following, skin knitting smoothly back together until it’s just John sitting in front of him, a frown on his face made obvious by the fact that he now has lips.

“A good amount of me _is_ joints on most days,” John points out. “And you didn’t answer my question, either! I’m allowed to do the thing. I’m Death, it’s _my_ thing.”

“You did stop doing the thing, though,” Dirk says. He might be smiling, he’s not sure. “Anyway, to answer your question since you’re being real snippy about it. Yeah, we want to kill her. She’s fucked enough up, don’t you think? We don’t know what she did with the Emperor, only that she couldn’t possibly have killed him.”

“How do you know that?”

“You’d have been way more of an asshole about how we’re sworn to serve someone that no longer even exists,” Dirk points out, with a raised eyebrow. “You wouldn’t be able to resist shoving that particular irony in my face, y’know.”

“Wow! You know me too well,” John laughs, but there’s something strained behind it. The hollow of his cheeks beneath that olive skin grows more pronounced, his complexion sallowing as fine lines spread from the corners of his eyes.

“I’ve been spending a lot of time talking to you lately,” he shrugs. “But I wouldn’t say that I know you that well at all.”

“You know me better than almost anyone else did. Does. Will, probably,” John says. Again with the flicker of pale fire behind his eyes, sunken in further now.

On impulse, Dirk reaches out, catches John’s too-bony fingers in his and squeezes. He has no sense of temperature here, but the gesture is undeniably physical rather than metaphysical, judging from how John’s breath catches.

“Bold of you to assume that my descendants down the line won’t come annoy your dumb immortal ass,” Dirk says simply. “There’s four of us, and at least one might reproduce, assuming we survive this. And if you don’t, you’ll absolutely have to deal with the four of us for ages anyway. Pick your poison.”

“Another Dirk Strider? Terrifying. And while I’d like to meet your cousin, the author- I don’t really know that I want to talk to her. Better you survive this, I think. One of you bothering me all the time is more than enough.”

John takes a step back, his skin now transparent and wispy as old parchment, the veins beneath it a stark, greenish-blue contrast to the sickly pallor. It tightens over his face, highlighting the hollows of his cheeks, under his eyes, his lips shrinking away to nothing as gum recedes and teeth stand out strong like a cemetery.

“…John?” he asks, unsure now. The mention of the Empress (bitch that she is) shouldn’t be enough to have Death itself on edge, and yet. There’s been slip-ups just now, when John is usually so careful about controlling his form and which he presents to Dirk. There’s real anger in his voice when he speaks about her, the kind that Dirk hadn’t thought he would feel for- well, anyone. Personal, not professional. She’s cheated death (and ergo Death) and lived much, much longer than she should have, glutted herself on thanergy and thalergy alike in a perversion of all the rules the Houses still obey- but. This is personal, not professional. He tucks it away to think about later.

“No.”

NOT RIGHT NOW. And Death stands before him once more, the tattered dark robes bending light away from them, and its voice is Doom. I WILL GIFT TO THEE A BOON, MORTAL. A TOKEN OF MY FAVOR. IT WILL TURN THE TIDE OF YOUR WAR, IT WILL WIN YOU YOUR BATTLE.

SHE HAS RULED FOR LONG ENOUGH, AND SO I DEEM THY CAUSE WORTHY.

A skeletal hand reaches under the robes, and Dirk watches with wide eyes. There’s a loud snap, and a wince, before the hand re-appears, and in it, white against white, bone against bone, the perfect curve of a rib, one end jagged from where it’s been snapped off.

Dirk stares at it, and then forces himself to meet the blue fire burning in those hollowed eyes.

TAKE IT.

He takes it. He can’t resist. His fingers brush against the proffered metacarpals, where a palm would be in any other form, and they both shudder at it. Dirk can feel the pulse of power from the rib, even only like this- the world around him sharpens into a clearer focus, he can see all the grains of wood in that stupid fucking chair, the spots where the paint has been more clumsily applied.

“I- are you sure?” is what comes out of his mouth, and he hates how uncertain he sounds. It wouldn’t have been done, if there was a shred of doubt. Of course Death is sure. That’s all Death ever is. And this isn’t a gift that Dirk can turn down either.

YES.

A pause. Dirk feels that familiar tug, the one that tells him his injuries are knitted together properly, but this time he clings _hard_ to them, to this liminal space, because it’s brimming with energy now that he can feel it, and that- he needs that. Every bit of it that he can get, for all that it’s never been his skill.

THAT IS YOUR CUE.

Dirk steps back, his grip on the bone white-knuckled, like he thinks it’s going to disappear. It might, for all he knows.

(He doesn’t think it will. He’s been blessed here, he knows; beyond anything the Emperor might have left behind, beyond the old, old bones moldering in the catacombs of the Ninth, there’s nothing anywhere near as powerful as this could be.)

(It changes everything.)

“Thanks,” Dirk manages to say. “I’ll return it when everything is over.”

YES. YOU WILL.

There’s a pause, a moment of an indrawn breath.

AND- DIRK?

YOU WILL DESTROY THAT WITCH FOR ME SO THAT I MAY COLLECT HER MYSELF.

“That, I can do.”

**5.**

“I didn’t think I was going to see you this soon, you know.”

“Should I apologize for that? I figure I’m better company than anyone else you’ve ferried through lately.”

“Well. It’s still not time to ferry _you_ through. So to say,” John rubs at the back of his neck, awkward. “Not that I necessarily do it that, uh, directly. Sometimes it’s nice to have someone stay over, you know?”

“Not really. Isn’t that breaking a whole lot of rules?” Dirk raises an eyebrow at him, now. “I’m pretty sure that’s breaking almost all the rules.”

“One, not if you wrote the rules. And two- it’s not like they’ll _never_ go. Just that it’ll be kind of the long way around.”

“Oh, sure, because that makes it all better.”

“Shut up,” John grumbles, arms crossing over his chest. “You’re in good shape this time, too. What’re you here for?”

Dirk pauses, glancing away. “Just visiting, actually. I’m sure you already kind of know how things went down.”

A flicker of bone-white under brown skin again, the scar through his eye widening into a bleeding, messy gash, the blood pouring forth crusting and flaking within a millisecond. Dirk is stupidly captivated.

YES. IT WAS SATISFACTORY.

“I’d say so, yeah,” he agrees. “We won, which is the important part. Things are different now, we have something with the heads of the Houses being in charge, for more balance. It’s not perfect, but it’s better. And- you played a big part in that, with what you gave me. I thought I should drop by, and give it back. I don’t want to owe you anything else, and there’s folks that would kill and worse to get their hands on this.”

There’s a low hum, now, one that settles deep into the marrow of Dirk’s bones. John’s face returns to- well. Not normal, per se- Dirk can’t think of the strange, lively form as _normal_ when he knows what Death is meant to look like. But it’s John, at the end of it.

“Nah. Keep it for the end,” John says, shaking his head. “I trust you to keep it safe. But- you know. Check in every so often about it. I’d like to make sure I’m not going to have to get it back from some weirdo.”

“I can do that. I’m getting better at the whole projection thing, you know,” he adds. “Been practicing and everything. I’ll be checking in so often you won’t know what to do with yourself.”

“What, you’re exposing yourself to the malign forces and the horrorterrors that lurk at the edges of existence just for me?” John asks, smiling so hard Dirk can see the dimples he has. Fucking, dimples.

“A little bit. I’m not giving up my skeletons, but I figure if you’re here to meet me, there’s a lot less risk of the horrorterrors getting in my way. And besides. I’ll need the skill.”

“What for?”

“They want to start looking for the Emperor,” Dirk says, with a shrug. “I think it’s a thinly veiled excuse to get rid of a few people- some of my family included, most of my friends-, so that we don’t become symbols of anything before the new ruling system gets set up.”

“Oh. That seems- kind of unfair?” John observes, though it comes out as more of a question. “Sending you off when you did a lot of the dirty work.”

“I don’t really mind. It’s pretty noble, as far as long-ass and probably futile quests go, and I think we’ll learn a lot along the way. Besides. Any of his artifacts- those shouldn’t be left waiting for the wrong people to get to them. If they’re guarded, that’s fine, but if they’re not. If they’re not well-hidden, they need to be.” Dirk rubs his thumb along the smooth curve of the rib bone in his pocket, the only tangible thing he carries with him into this halfway realm.

“You think it’s futile?” John’s gaze is intent; he’s focused in on only one part of all of what Dirk just said, and that’d be annoying if he wasn’t entirely used to it by now.

Dirk looks at him for a long moment. “Don’t you?”

John looks back, and when he speaks, it’s with the weight of gravity behind each syllable, dragging them down. Dirk almost wants to fall to his knees.

THE EMPEROR AND HIS LYCTORS ARE GONE BEYOND THE REACH OF MORTALITY. YOU WILL NOT FIND THEM.

“That’s what I thought.”

**+1.**

MORTAL SOUL, FINALLY THOU ART WITHIN MY GRASP. COME PEACEFULLY, YOU MAY REST AT LAST.

“Like hell you’re going to let me rest after all the grief I’ve given you,” Dirk scoffs. “I’m just impressed you got the whole spiel out this time. Not so much with the spiel itself, by the way, I was two more seconds away from throwing your rib at you to get you to shut up.”

He hesitates a bit before passing over the bone in question, though, its surface worn smooth and soft from Dirk’s fingers over the years. He’s almost loathe to give it up- not because of what it is, but because of what it means. John examines it for a second, and then passes it right back to him with a shrug.

“ _I’m_ just impressed you managed to get uglier when you got old. I didn’t even think that was possible,” John says, but there’s a smile in his voice as his skeletal visage melts right away, and his bright blue eyes are dancing. Huh. Dirk tucks the bone back away into his pocket, and resists the urge to roll his eyes.

“Says the man who’s literally all bones, no skin. Not even any guts, I bet, which doesn’t bode well for the snack situation at your place.”

“How do you even know that’s where we’re going? I could punt you straight to hell. Just so you know.”

“Please,” Dirk says, with a smirk. “What happened to the long way around?”

John just shoves him, and it’s so startling that Dirk can actually _feel_ it now, properly- the press of his hand, the harsh jut of bone beneath skin that’s there-not-there.

He’d always thought that John’s hands were cold. But they’re not. His breath catches in his throat a little, and he stumbles more than he means to.

The only upside is that John looks just as shocked, his lips in a soft ‘o’, his eyes wide and so, _so_ blue. Dirk straightens up, and steps closer all over again. Not to do anything too drastic, just to brush up against his arm, and shiver when he can _still_ feel it, where his bare skin rasps against the cloth of John’s sleeve.

“Oh….,” John breathes out, reverent as anything. “I forgot this part.”

“What do you mean, you forgot?” Dirk asks. It doesn’t come out harsh at all, even if he means it to be teasing. “You deal with souls all the time.”

“Not yours, though. Not yours when I could carry it in my bare hands,” John murmurs, hands cupped in front of him as if to receive it. But Dirk remains human-shaped, and it’s his hand that comes to rest in both of John’s. John clasps it tight, his grip urgent, a little shaky.

How long has it been since he touched someone, Dirk wonders. Since he _wanted_ to? Since he showed someone the- long way around. He suspects the answer is somewhere along the lines of too fucking long.

“Don’t forget next time,” he says simply. And then-, “Wow. How does a skeleton have sweaty hands?”

“Shut up, oh my god,” John groans, but he doesn’t let go. His hands aren’t actually all that sweaty, just a little bit damp, like a not-so-fresh grave. Dirk doesn’t mind it at all. “I can’t believe I’m stuck with you.”

Dirk just hums, pleased with that. He squeezes John’s fingers tight, turning a little to look around. “Sucks to suck. I’m not going anywhere, bro, hate to break it to you. You’re gonna have to live and suffer.”

“However will I manage?” John asks, but there’s still something reverent in his tone, in his gaze as he looks at their joined hands. Dirk hesitates for just a second, before reaching out with his free hand to cup John’s cheek, thumb smoothing against the arch of it. He’s got- stubble, prickly under his fingers, until it gives way to smoothness at the tail end of his scar. His cheek fits perfectly into Dirk’s palm.

“I think I could convince you of a few ways,” Dirk says, soft. “Should we get going?”

“Yeah. One thing first, though.” Dirk lets his hand drop as John straightens up a little, their fingers interlocking. He watches curiously as John turns around, and guides him to do so too, just with a little touch to the small of his back.

The grey sameness is gone to that side, replaced by the sketched-in details of a cliff. He knows it intimately from memory; he can taste the salt in the air. It’s a lonely place, but never quiet for the lulling crash of waves against the rocks below, the trickle of water against the pebbled beaches. And at the center of it, a flare of red warmth that makes Dirk’s chest just cave in on itself. Dave.

John waves a little at Dave’s faint form, a small red beacon in the drear grey landscape of the physical world. Dirk matches the motion; he’s loathe to leave his brother alone, but it’s time, and he knows that.

“I’ll take good care of him,” John says solemnly.

“You’d better not stuff my corpse or give Jake my skull,” Dirk tells him, pointing a finger his way.

“What a shame Dirk’s dead and gone,” Dave says, ignoring Dirk completely, like an asshole. Forget it. He can stay alone for all Dirk cares. ~~He’ll be just fine, and they’ll see each other again later.~~ “I swear I can still hear his voice sometimes. So realistic.”

Dirk flips him off, and John outright laughs at his side.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m going to throw a whole party about it,” John grins. “And someone’s definitely going to be in charge of the food, and some good backrubs afterwards.”

“Don’t be gross,” Dave says, pretending to gag. Like he and his husband haven’t been disgustingly domestic for the past twenty years they’ve been married, and another ten before that.

“Quit bossing me around, Your Majesty,” Dirk rolls his eyes. “Now let’s go.”

“Home?” John asks, something tentative in his voice as Dave fades from view entirely. Dirk watches for a moment, as the life-red of his soul fades into the distance.

“Home,” he agrees, quiet. “I bet your décor is fucking hideous.”

**Author's Note:**

> Re: The 'major character death' tag- get the joke?
> 
> I'll see myself out.


End file.
